Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer, novelist and prominent member of the Huxley family. He graduated from Balliol College at the University of Oxford with an honours in English literature. Early in his career Huxley edited the magazine Oxford Poetry and published short stories, mid career and later, he published travel writing, film stories, and scripts. He spent the part of his life in the U. S. living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. In 1962, a year before his death, he was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature, Huxley was a humanist and satirist. He became interested in subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time and he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in seven different years. Huxley was born in Godalming, England, in 1894 and he was the third son of the writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley, who edited Cornhill Magazine, and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Priors Field School.
Julia was the niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Aldous was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist and controversialist. His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley became outstanding biologists, Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevelyan Huxley, who committed suicide after a period of clinical depression. As a child, Huxleys nickname was Ogie, short for Ogre and he was described by his brother, Julian, as someone who frequently the strangeness of things. According to his cousin and contemporary, Gervas Huxley, he had an early interest in drawing, Huxleys education began in his fathers well-equipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming. He was taught there by his own mother for years until she became terminally ill. After Hillside, he went on to Eton College and his mother died in 1908 when he was 14. In 1911 he contracted the eye disease which left practically blind for two to three years and this ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor.
In October 1913, Huxley went up to Balliol College, Oxford, in January 1916, he volunteered to join the British Army in the Great War, but was rejected on health grounds, being half-blind in one eye. In 1916 he edited Oxford Poetry and in June of that year graduated BA with First Class honours and his brother Julian wrote, I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career and his uniqueness lay in his universalism
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Francesco Gramsci was an Italian Marxist theorist and politician. He wrote on political theory and linguistics and he attempted to break from the economic determinism of traditional Marxist thought and so is considered a key neo-Marxist. He was a member and one-time leader of the Communist Party of Italy and was imprisoned by Benito Mussolinis Fascist regime. He wrote more than 30 notebooks and 3,000 pages of history and his Prison Notebooks are considered a highly original contribution to 20th century political theory. Gramsci drew insights from varying sources - not only other Marxists but such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Vilfredo Pareto, Georges Sorel. The notebooks cover a range of topics, including Italian history and nationalism. The bourgeoisie in Gramscis view develops a hegemonic culture using ideology rather than violence, economic force, hegemonic culture propagates its own values and norms so that they become the common sense values of all and thus maintain the status quo. Hegemonic power is used to maintain consent to the capitalist order, rather than coercive power using force to maintain order.
This cultural hegemony is produced and reproduced by the dominant class through the institutions that form the superstructure, Antonio Francesco Gramsci was born in Ales, on the island of Sardinia, the fourth of seven sons of Francesco Gramsci. The senior Gramsci was an official from Gaeta, who married Giuseppina Marcias. Gramscis father was of distant Arbëreshë descent, though Gramsci mistakenly believed his fathers family left Albania as recently as 1821 and his mother belonged to a local landowning family. The senior Gramscis financial difficulties and troubles with the police forced the family to move about through several villages in Sardinia until they settled in Ghilarza. In 1898 Francesco was convicted of embezzlement and imprisoned, reducing his family to destitution, the young Antonio had to abandon schooling and work at various casual jobs until his fathers release in 1904. As a boy, Gramsci suffered from problems, particularly a malformation of the spine that stunted his growth.
Gramsci was plagued by various internal disorders throughout his life, Gramsci completed secondary school in Cagliari, where he lodged with his elder brother Gennaro, a former soldier whose time on the mainland had made him a militant socialist. However, Gramscis sympathies did not lie with socialism, but rather with the grievances of impoverished Sardinian peasants, in 1911, Gramsci won a scholarship to study at the University of Turin, sitting the exam at the same time as Palmiro Togliatti. At Turin, he read literature and took a keen interest in linguistics, Gramsci was in Turin as it was going through industrialization, with the Fiat and Lancia factories recruiting workers from poorer regions. Trade unions became established, and the first industrial social conflicts started to emerge, Gramsci frequented socialist circles as well as associating with Sardinian emigrants
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union, officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. It was nominally a union of national republics, but its government. The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917 and this established the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic and started the Russian Civil War between the revolutionary Reds and the counter-revolutionary Whites. In 1922, the communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Ukrainian, following Lenins death in 1924, a collective leadership and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all opposition to his rule, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization which laid the foundation for its victory in World War II and postwar dominance of Eastern Europe. Shortly before World War II, Stalin signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, in June 1941, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history.
Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin in 1945, the territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged by 1947 as the Soviet bloc confronted the Western states that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949. Following Stalins death in 1953, a period of political and economic liberalization, known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchevs Thaw, the country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took a lead in the Space Race with Sputnik 1, the first ever satellite, and Vostok 1. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, the war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters. In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost.
The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing the economic stagnation, the Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well, in August 1991, a coup détat was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a role in facing down the coup. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states
1973 oil crisis
The 1973 oil crisis began in October 1973 when the members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries proclaimed an oil embargo. The embargo occurred in response to United States support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War, by the end of the embargo in March 1974, the price of oil had risen from US$3 per barrel to nearly $12 globally, US prices were significantly higher. The embargo caused an oil crisis, or shock, with many short- and long-term effects on global politics and it was called the first oil shock, followed by the 1979 oil crisis, termed the second oil shock. The embargo was a response to American involvement in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, six days after Egypt and Syria launched a surprise military campaign against Israel, the US supplied Israel with arms. In response to this, the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries announced an oil embargo against Canada, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the crisis had a major impact on international relations and created a rift within NATO.
Some European nations and Japan sought to disassociate themselves from United States foreign policy in the Middle East to avoid being targeted by the boycott, Arab oil producers linked any future policy changes to peace between the belligerents. To address this, the Nixon Administration began multilateral negotiations with the combatants and they arranged for Israel to pull back from the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. By January 18,1974, US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had negotiated an Israeli troop withdrawal from parts of the Sinai Peninsula, the promise of a negotiated settlement between Israel and Syria was enough to convince Arab oil producers to lift the embargo in March 1974. The embargo occurred at a time of rising petroleum consumption by industrialized countries and coincided with an increase in oil imports by the worlds largest oil consumer. In the aftermath, targeted countries initiated a variety of policies to contain their future dependency. The 1973 oil price shock, with the accompanying 1973–74 stock market crash, was regarded as the first discrete event since the Great Depression to have a persistent effect on the US economy, the embargos success demonstrated Saudi Arabias diplomatic and economic power.
It was the largest oil exporter and a politically and religiously conservative kingdom, in 1970, US oil production started to decline, exacerbating the embargos impact. Following this, Nixon named James E. Akins as US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia to audit US production capacity, the confidential results were alarming—no spare capacity was available and production could only decrease. The oil embargo had little effect on supply, according to Akins. OPEC was organized to resist pressure by the Seven Sisters to reduce oil prices, at first, OPEC operated as an informal bargaining unit for resource-rich third-world countries. OPEC confined its activities to gaining a share of the profits generated by oil companies. In the early 1970s it began to exert economic and political strength, on August 15,1971, the United States unilaterally pulled out of the Bretton Woods Accord. The US abandoned the Gold Exchange Standard whereby the value of the dollar had been pegged to the price of gold and all other currencies were pegged to the dollar, shortly thereafter, Britain followed, floating the pound sterling
Cold War
The Cold War was a state of geopolitical tension after World War II between powers in the Eastern Bloc and powers in the Western Bloc. Historians do not fully agree on the dates, but a common timeframe is the period between 1947, the year the Truman Doctrine was announced, and 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed. The term cold is used there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two sides, although there were major regional wars, known as proxy wars, supported by the two sides. The Cold War split the temporary alliance against Nazi Germany, leaving the Soviet Union. The USSR was a Marxist–Leninist state ruled by its Communist Party and secret police, the Party controlled the press, the military, the economy and all organizations. In opposition stood the West, dominantly democratic and capitalist with a free press, a small neutral bloc arose with the Non-Aligned Movement, it sought good relations with both sides. The two superpowers never engaged directly in full-scale armed combat, but they were armed in preparation for a possible all-out nuclear world war.
The first phase of the Cold War began in the first two years after the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Berlin Blockade was the first major crisis of the Cold War. With the victory of the communist side in the Chinese Civil War and the outbreak of the Korean War, the USSR and USA competed for influence in Latin America, and the decolonizing states of Africa and Asia. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Revolution of 1956 was stopped by the Soviets, the expansion and escalation sparked more crises, such as the Suez Crisis, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. The USSR crushed the 1968 Prague Spring liberalization program in Czechoslovakia, détente collapsed at the end of the decade with the beginning of the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. The early 1980s were another period of elevated tension, with the Soviet downing of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the United States increased diplomatic and economic pressures on the Soviet Union, at a time when the communist state was already suffering from economic stagnation.
In the mid-1980s, the new Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced the reforms of perestroika and glasnost. Pressures for national independence grew stronger in Eastern Europe, especially Poland, Gorbachev meanwhile refused to use Soviet troops to bolster the faltering Warsaw Pact regimes as had occurred in the past. The result in 1989 was a wave of revolutions that peacefully overthrew all of the communist regimes of Central, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union itself lost control and was banned following an abortive coup attempt in August 1991. This in turn led to the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991. The United States remained as the only superpower. The Cold War and its events have left a significant legacy and it is often referred to in popular culture, especially in media featuring themes of espionage and the threat of nuclear warfare
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social and economic order and ideology that encourages the acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. In economics, consumerism may refer to policies which emphasise consumption. In this sense, consumerism expresses the idea not of one man, one voice, but of one dollar, one voice, the term consumerism has several definitions. These definitions may not be related to other and confusingly. One sense of the term relates to efforts to support consumers interests, by the early 1970s it had become the accepted term for the field and began to be used in these ways, Consumerism is the concept that consumers should be informed decision makers in the marketplace. Practices such as product testing make consumers informed, Consumerism is the concept that the marketplace itself is responsible for ensuring social justice through fair economic practices. Consumer protection policies and laws compel manufacturers to make products safe, Consumerism refers to the field of studying, regulating, or interacting with the marketplace.
The consumer movement is the movement which refers to all actions. While the above definitions were becoming established, other people using the term consumerism to mean high levels of consumption. This definition has gained popularity since the 1970s and began to be used in ways, Consumerism is the selfish and frivolous collecting of products. In protest against this, some people promote anti-consumerism and advocate simple living, Consumerism is a force from the marketplace which destroys individuality and harms society. It is related to globalization and in protest against this some people promote the anti-globalization movement, vance Packard worked to change the meaning of the term consumerism from a positive word about consumer practices to a negative word meaning excessive materialism and waste. The ads for his 1960 book The Waste Makers prominently featured the word consumerism in a negative way, the consumer society emerged in the late seventeenth century and intensified throughout the eighteenth century.
This included sugar, tobacco and coffee, these were grown on vast plantations in the Caribbean as demand steadily rose. In particular, sugar consumption in Britain during the course of the 18th century increased by a factor of 20, critics argue that colonialism was indeed a driver of consumerism, but they would place the emphasis on the supply rather than the demand as the motivating factor. An increasing mass of exotic imports as well as domestic manufactures had to be consumed by the number of people who had been consuming far less than was becoming necessary. That idea was produced later, more or less strategically in order to intensify consumption domestically, marketplaces expanded as shopping centres, such as the New Exchange, opened in 1609 by Robert Cecil in the Strand. Shops started to become important as places for Londoners to meet and socialise, restoration London saw the growth of luxury buildings as advertisements for social position with speculative architects like Nicholas Barbon and Lionel Cranfield
World War I
World War I, known as the First World War, the Great War, or the War to End All Wars, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history and it was one of the deadliest conflicts in history, and paved the way for major political changes, including revolutions in many of the nations involved. The war drew in all the worlds great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances, the Allies versus the Central Powers of Germany and Austria-Hungary. These alliances were reorganised and expanded as more nations entered the war, Japan, the trigger for the war was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, by Yugoslav nationalist Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914. This set off a crisis when Austria-Hungary delivered an ultimatum to the Kingdom of Serbia. Within weeks, the powers were at war and the conflict soon spread around the world.
On 25 July Russia began mobilisation and on 28 July, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on Serbia, Germany presented an ultimatum to Russia to demobilise, and when this was refused, declared war on Russia on 1 August. Germany invaded neutral Belgium and Luxembourg before moving towards France, after the German march on Paris was halted, what became known as the Western Front settled into a battle of attrition, with a trench line that changed little until 1917. On the Eastern Front, the Russian army was successful against the Austro-Hungarians, in November 1914, the Ottoman Empire joined the Central Powers, opening fronts in the Caucasus and the Sinai. In 1915, Italy joined the Allies and Bulgaria joined the Central Powers, Romania joined the Allies in 1916, after a stunning German offensive along the Western Front in the spring of 1918, the Allies rallied and drove back the Germans in a series of successful offensives. By the end of the war or soon after, the German Empire, Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, national borders were redrawn, with several independent nations restored or created, and Germanys colonies were parceled out among the victors.
During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, the Big Four imposed their terms in a series of treaties, the League of Nations was formed with the aim of preventing any repetition of such a conflict. This effort failed, and economic depression, renewed nationalism, weakened successor states, and feelings of humiliation eventually contributed to World War II. From the time of its start until the approach of World War II, at the time, it was sometimes called the war to end war or the war to end all wars due to its then-unparalleled scale and devastation. In Canada, Macleans magazine in October 1914 wrote, Some wars name themselves, during the interwar period, the war was most often called the World War and the Great War in English-speaking countries. Will become the first world war in the sense of the word. These began in 1815, with the Holy Alliance between Prussia and Austria, when Germany was united in 1871, Prussia became part of the new German nation. Soon after, in October 1873, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck negotiated the League of the Three Emperors between the monarchs of Austria-Hungary and Germany
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union from the mid-1920s until his death in 1953. Holding the post of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, he was effectively the dictator of the state. Stalin was one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 in order to manage the Bolshevik Revolution, alongside Lenin, Kamenev, Trotsky and Bubnov. Among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who took part in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and he managed to consolidate power following the 1924 death of Vladimir Lenin by suppressing Lenins criticisms and expanding the functions of his role, all the while eliminating any opposition. He remained General Secretary until the post was abolished in 1952, the economic changes coincided with the imprisonment of millions of people in Gulag labour camps. The initial upheaval in agriculture disrupted food production and contributed to the catastrophic Soviet famine of 1932–33, major figures in the Communist Party and government, and many Red Army high commanders, were arrested and shot after being convicted of treason in show trials.
Stalins invasion of Bukovina in 1940 violated the pact, as it went beyond the Soviet sphere of influence agreed with the Axis, Germany ended the pact when Hitler launched a massive invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Despite heavy human and territorial losses, Soviet forces managed to halt the Nazi incursion after the decisive Battles of Moscow, after defeating the Axis powers on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured Berlin in May 1945, effectively ending the war in Europe for the Allies. The Soviet Union subsequently emerged as one of two recognized world superpowers, the other being the United States, Communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union were established in most countries freed from German occupation by the Red Army, which constituted the Eastern Bloc. Stalin had relations with Mao Zedong in China and Kim Il-sung in North Korea. On February 9,1946, Stalin delivered a public speech in which he explained the fundamental incompatibility of communism and capitalism. He stressed that the system needed war for raw materials.
The Second World War was but the latest in a chain of conflicts which could be broken only when the economy made the transformation into communism. Stalin led the Soviet Union through its post-war reconstruction phase, which saw a significant rise in tension with the Western world that would be known as the Cold War, Stalin remains a controversial figure today, with many regarding him as a tyrant. However, popular opinion within the Russian Federation is mixed, the exact number of deaths caused by Stalins regime is still a subject of debate, but it is widely agreed to be in the order of millions. Joseph Stalin was born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, the Russian-language version of his birth name is Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Ioseb was born on 18 December 1878 in the town of Gori and his father was Besarion Jughashvili, a cobbler, while his mother was Ekaterine Keke Geladze, a housemaid. As a child, Ioseb was plagued with health issues
Keynesian economics
Keynesian economics are the various theories about how in the short run, and especially during recessions, economic output is strongly influenced by aggregate demand. Keynes contrasted his approach to the aggregate supply-focused classical economics that preceded his book, the interpretations of Keynes that followed are contentious and several schools of economic thought claim his legacy. Keynesian economists generally argue that, as demand is volatile and unstable. Keynesian economists often advocate a role for government intervention during recessions. The advent of the crisis of 2007–08 caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought. This argument rests upon the assumption that if a surplus of goods or services exists and he saw the economy as unable to maintain itself at full employment and believed that it was necessary for the government to step in and put under-utilized savings to work through government spending. Keynes argued that when a glut occurred, it was the over-reaction of producers, Keynesians therefore advocate an active stabilization policy to reduce the amplitude of the business cycle, which they rank among the most serious of economic problems.
According to the theory, government spending can be used to aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity, reducing unemployment. A principle function of banks in countries which have them is to influence this interest rate through a variety of mechanisms which are collectively called monetary policy. This is how monetary policy which reduces interest rates is thought to stimulate economic activity, i. e. grow the economy, expansionary fiscal policy consists of increasing net public spending, which the government can effect by a) taxing less, b) spending more, or c) both. Investment and consumption by government raises demand for products and for employment. If desired spending exceeds revenue, the government finances the difference by borrowing from capital markets by issuing government bonds, two points are important to note at this point. First, deficits are not required for expansionary fiscal policy, and second, for example, if a government ran a deficit of 10% both last year and this year, this would represent neutral fiscal policy.
In fact, if it ran a deficit of 10% last year and 5% this year, this would actually be contractionary. On the other hand, if the government ran a surplus of 10% of GDP last year and 5% this year, the purpose of Keynes theory was to show such conditions could, without intervention, persist in a stable, though dismal, equilibrium. By the end of the Second World War, Keynesianism was the most popular school of economic theory in the non-Communist world. Beginning in the late 1960s, a new classical macroeconomics movement arose, critical of Keynesian assumptions and it was characterized by explicit and rigorous adherence to microfoundations, as well as use of increasingly sophisticated mathematical modelling. During the Great Depression, the classical theory attributed mass unemployment to high, to Keynes, the determination of wages was more complicated
Mass production
Mass production, flow production or continuous production is the production of large amounts of standardized products and especially on assembly lines. Together with job production and batch production, it is one of the three main production methods, the term mass production was popularized by a 1926 article in the Encyclopedia Britannica supplement that was written based on correspondence with Ford Motor Company. The New York Times used the term in the title of an article that appeared before publication of the Britannica article, the concepts of mass production are applied to various kinds of products, from fluids and particulates handled in bulk to discrete solid parts to assemblies of such parts. Mass production is a field, but it can generally be contrasted with craft production or distributed manufacturing. Mass production of fluid matter typically involves pipes with centrifugal pumps or screw conveyors to transfer raw materials or partially complete products between vessels, materials on pallets are handled with forklifts.
Also used for handling heavy items like reels of paper, steel or machinery are electric overhead cranes, sometimes called bridge cranes because they span large factory bays. Mass production is intensive and energy intensive, as it uses a high proportion of machinery. It is usually automated while total expenditure per unit of product is decreased, the machinery that is needed to set up a mass production line is so expensive that there must be some assurance that the product is to be successful to attain profits. One of the descriptions of mass production is that the skill is built into the tool, for example, in the 19th or early 20th century, this could be expressed as the craftsmanship is in the workbench itself. Later, once computerized control came about, jigs were obviated and this is the specialized capital required for mass production, each workbench and set of tools is different. Crossbows made with bronze parts were produced in China during the Warring States period, the Qin Emperor unified China at least in part by equipping large armies with these weapons, which were equipped with a sophisticated trigger mechanism made of interchangeable parts.
Ships of war were produced on a scale at a moderate cost by the Carthaginians in their excellent harbors. The Venetians themselves produced ships using prefabricated parts and assembly lines many centuries later, the Venetian Arsenal apparently produced nearly one ship every day, in what was effectively the worlds first factory which, at its height, employed 16,000 people. Mass production in the industry has been commonplace since the Gutenberg Bible was published using a printing press in the mid-15th century. In the Industrial Revolution simple mass production techniques were used at the Portsmouth Block Mills in England to make ships pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the Napoleonic Wars. It was achieved in 1803 by Marc Isambard Brunel in cooperation with Henry Maudslay under the management of Sir Samuel Bentham, the Navy was in a state of expansion that required 100,000 pulley blocks to be manufactured a year. Bentham had already achieved remarkable efficiency at the docks by introducing power-driven machinery, by 1805, the dockyard had been fully updated with the revolutionary, purpose-built machinery at a time when products were still built individually with different components. A total of 45 machines were required to perform 22 processes on the blocks, the machines were almost entirely made of metal thus improving their accuracy and durability
Economics
Economics is a social science concerned chiefly with description and analysis of the production and consumption of goods and services according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work, consistent with this focus, textbooks often distinguish between microeconomics and macroeconomics. Microeconomics examines the behaviour of elements in the economy, including individual agents and markets, their interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, firms, macroeconomics analyzes the entire economy and issues affecting it, including unemployment of resources, economic growth, and the public policies that address these issues. Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, as in business, health care, Economic analyses may be applied to such diverse subjects as crime, the family, politics, social institutions, war and the environment. At the turn of the 21st century, the domain of economics in the social sciences has been described as economic imperialism.
The ultimate goal of economics is to improve the conditions of people in their everyday life. There are a variety of definitions of economics. Some of the differences may reflect evolving views of the subject or different views among economists, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Say, distinguishing the subject from its uses, defines it as the science of production, distribution. On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle coined the dismal science as an epithet for classical economics, in this context and it enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on the analysis of wealth, how wealth is created and consumed, but he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it, generates both cost and benefits, resources are used to attain the goal.
If the war is not winnable or if the costs outweigh the benefits. Some subsequent comments criticized the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets, there are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for the macroeconomics of high unemployment. The same source reviews a range of included in principles of economics textbooks. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which the author believes economics is evolving, microeconomics examines how entities, forming a market structure, interact within a market to create a market system
